Celestia is Broken . . . Really?
Dan's Comments
DISCLAIMER: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro, Inc., Harry Dresden is the property of Jim Butcher, Carl Kolchak is the property of ABC/Universal Television, Ranma Saotome is the property of Rumiko Takahashi, Sailor Jupiter is the property of Naoko Takeuchi.

"Be vewwy, vewwy quiet, we're hunting bug ponies," Harry said as they approached the trace that meant changelings.

Ranma shaded his eyes and looked, before dropping down out of the tree to the ground. "Are you sure? I don't see, or feel anything."

"My magic never lies," Harry said, "You wouldn't understand."

"I have a curse that changes me into a girl," Ranma replied in low tones, "I know something about magic."

"So why doesn't Patrick remove the curse?" Harry whispered.

"Something about having a birefringent soul manifesting from conjointment." Ranma shrugged. "Basically I am Ranma and Ranko and they aren't similar enough now to be considered a curse, but they're still entangled enough that separating us will leave us both soul-sick. More like a split personality in siamese twins. You want the technical mumbo-jumbo, ask Patrick." Ranma scrambled up a windmill and peered over the edge in the direction the magic said the changelings were.

Harry wondered what Ranma would do against some of the creatures Harry had previously fought. He'd probably kick their ass and make it look easy, he thought as Ranma climbed down as fast and quietly as he'd climbed up.

"Nothin'," Ranma said, "Either your spell is wrong or they hide better than anything I've ever heard of."

"Let's head up to the next ridge. They could be moving away from us, the trace isn't getting that much stronger, but it's still arrow straight, that way." Harry pointed.

Ranma looked. "Are they in those hills? They're too far away for me to see."

Harry chuckled. "No chance, what are we looking for, an army? Oh shit, we are."

"Let's get a map, and we'll triangulate. Two lines, and where they intersect is where they are," Ranma said.

"How come people think you're stupid?" Harry asked.

"I'm good at fighting and sparring, not so much at anything else," Ranma admitted.

"So how do you, Makoto and Patrick . . . get along?" Harry asked.

"They turn everything into a spar or contest," Ranma said, then blushed, "And they like it when I get as good as they are." He brightened. "Then it's my job to teach them. That's fun too."

"I'll bet."
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'Contessa Solaris' briefly wondered if that was actually an assassination attempt. The loud CRACK from her left wing root joined the mental echo of the one from her right moments ago. And the large minotaur `mare` who'd inflicted both had hardly even begun.

POCK! SNACKLE! Came from her back. Celestia's eyes went wide as her body reported the insistent rearrangement of her normal structure.

"I had no idea she was so tense," Fluttershy told Helga, the masseuse who wasn't quite sending Celestia into the throes of agony.

"Ya. Is always gut." CR - POP! "To get a pro who is working on." crik, Crick, CRIK, SN-POPPLE! "Healthy body. Not just feel gut body." RASP-Pop-pop-pop.

Celestia dearly hoped the hoof in her peripheral vision was a forehoof, a hind leg had no business being over her head.

"Yes I have a bear friend who sometimes needs some chiropractic treatments," Fluttershy said, then laughed, "Poor Twilight thought I was hurting him."

Celestia was mare-handled onto her side and had her foreleg moved up and up higher than it was ever meant to go. She felt the scream of pain building as her body told her there were pieces so out of position they might as well be detached, and it was quite uncomfortable. But she didn't scream, since the pain somehow never arrived.

She was rolled over and the other foreleg got the same treatment, and nearly produced the prepared scream. But as uncomfortable as it got, the threshold between pain and discomfort was never breached.

Then the hind legs. The incipient scream of agony waited on her lips but the pain threshold was never reached. She only yelped a little when Helga somehow grabbed her tail and adjusted. CRICKLE!

"Is Prin - Contessa Solaris okay?" Helga asked with honest concern.

"Oh, just taken by surprise, don't mind me," she said and chuckled, wondering just how many pieces she was going to find herself in.

"Well, be ready for this," Helga said, and Celestia nearly yelped again as a hot, moist towel was wrapped around her tail. Others went around her wings and legs, then were added to her barrel and neck, Fluttershy helping with the last. The heat easing the last tension as Helga packed away her gear.

"Now, she stay in moist heat an hour. Helga will change them out in 20 minutes," the masseuse said, "We'll do the real work tomorrow."

"I'll keep an eye on her," Fluttershy promised.

With the minotaur gone, Celestia looked at Fluttershy. "That was normal?"

"No, you were a lot worse than most ponies. I would think you'd have someone to help you at the palace," Fluttershy said, "It was a pleasure to watch her work. I picked up a few tricks myself."

"I thought I did have a masseuse. I just never had an experience like this," Celestia admitted.

"Well, the Contessa can come back every so often and get a retreatment. That's the best compliment you can give, trusting and coming back," Fluttershy said, "Although Princess Celestia may need to talk to her masseuse about really doing his or her job."

Celestia didn't nod, and considered how to broach the subject with the pony. Maybe let him watch Fluttershy work on her bear friend, Celestia relaxed and considered. Then unrelaxed as she remembered Helga had said 'real work tomorrow'. It isn't over, Celestia realized.
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Ranma looked at the map and felt no satisfaction that the hills he'd pointed out earlier were in fact the source of the changeling emanations. He was already on to the next question. "How many changelings would there have to be, to be that far away, and for your spell to make you think they're fewer and close?"

"A lot," Harry replied, "You feel like walking into the middle of them and counting?"

Ranma steeled himself. "You don't suppose that we could beat up the leader and take over the whole army?"

"If we defeat him?" Harry asked.

"When we defeat him," Ranma replied, cocked his head and grinned at Dresden, "What's with the doom and gloom? You're a wizard, Harry."

"I hate those books," Harry said as he followed Ranma.
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Sometimes they'd infect them with various diseases, and watch how the disease progressed. The Nazis did the same, but the troops at Harbin kept meticulous records, better than the haphazard ways the Nazis did, Makoto thought and enjoyed Nightmare's faint pleas to stop, But it was the testing of artillery shells that was ingenious - aw it fainted.

Sailor Jupiter returned her attention to the meeting taking place before her. The argument about water usage, from the ocean, had the feeling of the surreal. "Excuse me, doesn't drinking sea water make ponies sick?"

The academic who was presenting her plans to tax ponies for sea water consumption looked around confused at having the rhythm of her speech broken. "Well, yes, I suppose," she said with a strong air of 'what does that matter you stupid person?'

"Chancellor, collect that pony, her charts and colleagues and have them thrown over the edge of the city as a lesson to people coming into my presence unequipped with common sense. Have her," Sailor Jupiter said and pointed to the pegasus presenter, "Thrown off the west end."

"Yes, your Cruelty," Blueblood said with all the gravitas he could, reminding others not to laugh at the situation of killing a pegasus by defenestration.

Sailor Jupiter ignored the protests and screams of the others, and returned her attention to the rest of the court. "Now, who had the pollution diagrams, and are you ready to present, or do you need time to brush up?"

The youngest and frailest of the presenters stepped up. "I'm willing to present," she said as she levitated her charts to the easel and began explaining why letting the steel mills and other heavy industry simply dump their wastes in the ocean was a bad idea.

"Have you considered the effect of mercury?" Sailor Jupiter asked, remembering the absolutely disastrous effect that had on a fishing village in Japan.

"Yes, I kept that as a stinger, but we can go over it now if you wish," the presenter said.

"No, please continue," Jupiter said and settled back to watch the presentation and the ponies' reactions to it. She'd read the synopsis and was generally in favor of what was being proposed, but it would have to be broken into bits, rather than lumped together as an omnibus `bill`.
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Ranma stepped away from the fallen changeling, after seventeen of the things, the last three the huge ones he'd nicknamed leviathans, he was feeling a little winded. "Any more?" he asked, and regretted it as three came at him at once. A leviathan and two ordinary soldiers. He watched the green glow form around the two soldiers. He sighed and leapt atop the leviathan, only to dodge out of the way as the soldiers slammed into where he formerly was, knocking themselves and the leviathan out.

He jumped off the three morons, and shouted to the assembled crowd, "Look, I can fight you all, or you can show me to your leader, or you can surrender."

He heard the angry noises, and watched an entire phalanx break from the crowd and advance towards him. He mentally shrugged and began stepping backwards and to the right. And they followed him.

So if they don't feel emotion, can they still be angry? he wondered as his body's long practice carried him automatically through the spiral of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, I guess we'll find out.
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Harry was well aware of his family name and the implications, but he'd never really understood the item connecting his name to his city's, until now. The tornado that Ranma had generated somehow, grew larger and larger as the changelings charged Ranma en masse.

The first group got thrown a few hundred feet, while this last group might manage miles, he thought as the changelings charged and were hurled in all directions, by a force that should have screamed magic, but couldn't be detected as such.

I gotta learn how he does that, Harry thought as he dodged a falling changeling.

The creature with a tool belt dumped it, spilling various fasteners everywhere, and briefly changed into a duplicate of Harry. "Screw you guys. I'm going home!" the changeling-Harry told Harry, before detransforming, and racing into the air on battered wings.
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Sailor Jupiter led the dance of the guards as she sang,

"Oh, Sailor Jupe, babe, has such teeth, dear
And she shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has Pat Buchanan
And he keeps it, out of sight

"You know when Lil' Jupe bites with her teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, though, wears old Buchanan
So there's never, never a trace of red

"Now on the sidewalk, ooh, sunny morning, uh-huh
Lies an elflord just oozin' life
Eek, and someone's sneakin' 'round the corner
Could that someone be Pat the Knife?

"There's a tugboat, down by the river, don't ya know
Where a cement bag's just a-droopin' on down
Oh, that cement is just, it's there for the weight, dear
Five'll get ya ten old Paddy's back in town

"Now d'ya hear about Annatar?
He disappeared, babe
After drawin' out all his ring-made cash
And now Buchanan spends just like a sailor
Could it be our boy's done something rash?

"Now naughty Melkor, ho, ho, yeah, mean Ungoliant
Ooh, nine-head Orochi and old Lucy Fur
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Now that Paddy's back in town

"I said, "Now naughty Melkor, ho, ho, yeah, mean Ungoliant
Ooh, nine-head Orochi and old Lucy Fur"
Yes, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Paddy's back in town
Look out, old Paddy's back."

The ponies broke down the sets and packed away the costumes, and looked at Makoto with very strange and concerned expressions.

"Patrick Buchanan was your paramour?" Blueblood said as he approached, struggling mightily to keep from smiling.

"Yes," Makoto said.

"Interesting. Professor Cluster Flight did remember she could fly," Blueblood reported, "Before she hit the ground, although it took her most of the way to stop protesting her position in academe as justification for not being subject to the, ahem, gravity of her situation."

"The rest, northeast or southeast?" Sailor Jupiter asked.

"We split them up and marched those less guilty to the southeast and ordered them to jump in small groups, it's near their campus after all and all complied," Blueblood said, ignored the stifled guffaw of one of the soldiers, "The others were blindfolded before we reached the edge and were tossed off en masse." He ignored the other soldier who was making noises like a glass jar full of change being shaken.

"Very good," Sailor Jupiter said, "Now, all laugh!" She did the best `Kodachi` laugh she could manage while the rest of the soldiers and the court just let go and started busting a gut rolling on the floor. She was glad she saw Shining Armor and Blueblood were joining in.